Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Languages of Truth

Languages of Truth by Salman Rushdie

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This is the newest collection of Salman Rushdie essays, and like the previous two cover a little more than 15 years or so. The consistency of all three is his wit and intellect, but especially his promotion of social causes, especially regarding race and representation. If you’ve read any Salman Rushdie novels, you might recognize or agree that they often involve elaborate story-telling, often silly dives into the minutiae of life, and lofty language, peppered with erudition and intelligence. He’s one of those writers for […]

Imaginary Homelands – Salman Rushdie (1991)

IMaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie

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Of the handful of nonfiction works I’ve read by Rushdie, this one feels like the most important and essential one. There’s some significant strengths in this one, so very necessary commentary, and nuanced understandings that either exist less in his later writing, or possibly exist less in his later thinking. If we’re thinking less of Rushdie as a public individual with a variety of views and a changing orientation toward the world and more of a writer who is presenting his views on these particular […]

Tossing in a bunch at once.

The Ice Shirt by William Vollmann

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The Rip Off by Jim Thompson

On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

Why are We in Vietnam? by Norman Mailer

A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons

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The Ice Shirt – 3/5 Stars I might be Viking-ed out. Between this novel, playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (which is a ton of game), and rewatching the Marvel movies (and with Loki starting up right now) this book was poorly chosen for me to read right now. But it’s a book I’ve been planning to read for 20 years and have failed to a few times, so maybe this is just my reaction to the book. The book is a kind of mixed media novel […]

The Jaguar Smile – Salman Rushdie (1987)

The Jaguar Smile by Salman Rushdie

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In the introduction of this small book of political commentary, journalism, live-history Rushdie, ten years on admits to getting caught up a little in the glitz and glamor of the event. I’ve felt the same when I look into revolutionary movements in countries I don’t understand, where my understanding of it must convert more to almost caricature and flattness, or if I am lucky typology, in the absence of knowledge and understanding. And Rushdie admits for falling a little for the romanticism here. It’s not […]

In the remote border town of Q., which when seen from the air resembles nothing so much as an ill-proportioned dumb-bell, there once lived three lovely, and loving, sisters.

Shame by Salman Rushdie

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This is Salman Rushdie’s third novel (after Grimus and Midnight’s Children) and this novel takes place in a city called Q in a country that seems an awful lot like Pakistan (and is definitely Pakistan) but which we’re repeatedly told is not Pakistan. The affectation in making these claims is to pose some distance both politically and historically, but also in the storytelling. Because this novel is not historical fiction, and in fact is a confabulation of events and people (however much they seem like real people […]

There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

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Written in exile, this children’s novel acts as an allegory, it seems clear, about the power of voice, the importance of stories, and the dangers and cruelties of censorship. The story involves Haroun, the son of a city’s official storyteller who has lost his voice. He begins to wonder how and why stories are losing their power, their prevalence, and their creativity and originality. He begins a journey to a neighboring kingdom to seek the source of these losses and finds a nefarious plot by […]



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